Right In Front Of You
by greyslostwho
Summary: Maddison fic. Really really sad. Massive tissue warning. Wrote when I was in extreme bad mood. But I think it's quite good. Please R&R! WARNING CHARACTER DEATH! Sorry!


**RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME **

**Maddison fic. Sad. Tissue Warning.**

I know he thought he should have noticed it. After all the times he had heard Derek talking about the patients that hadn't caught the brain tumours early enough. He beat himself up about that, I think. But I know as well as anyone that sometimes the odd headache and the dizziness just seem like a really bad hangover or a cold. No one noticed. He had no one to notice.

Alex told me about the day he collapsed in the hospital. O'Malley and Yang were there, and they paged Miranda straight away. He'd banged his head, so Derek did a CT to check for damage. What he found was Stage four cancer.

Meredith says he and Derek sat down and talked for a long time. Derek told him that the cancer was so far gone there was probably nothing that surgery could do. But he said he would try anyway, if he wanted. He said no, of course. Meredith says he asked Derek how long he had left, his voice steady and strong. Derek, unable to hold back the tears, told him the truth. A couple of weeks.

It was Richard who phoned me. At first, I was angry. I hadn't wanted anyone from SGH to contact me. I had wanted to move on. But the only words that Richard said were: Mark Sloan's dying, Addy. I can't remember the rest of that conversation, only that afterwards I knew that he had two weeks to live and he had a brain tumour. Within 24 hours I was in Seattle.

He was still in the hospital, recovering from some of the pain meds they had injected into his bloodstream. I stood in the doorway and waited until he looked up.  
"Hey Addy." he said softly, and I don't think I even noticed I was crying. At that moment the only thing I could think of was waste. Waste of time, that stupid 60 day pact, waste of love, sleeping with Alex, waste of a chance, leaving and going to LA. And sat right in front of me, waste of life.  
I took one shaky step towards him, unable to control my sobs. His voice cracked on the next words.  
"It's ok. It's gonna be ok"  
Such a lie. Because nothing was going to be ok again. When I finally managed to get to the chair beside his bed, it was almost in slow motion that I collapsed into his arms, holding him tightly, trying to keep every centimetre of him engrained in my memory.

He had to stay in the hospital one more night, so the rest of the pain meds could get pumped into him. Then he was discharged to live out his last days as he chose. I didn't let him choose, however. We went to the best hotel in Seattle, and we went in the honeymoon suite, and as we walked out of the hospital I held his hand. Everyone turned away - friends were suddenly having very important conversations, nurses found spots on the walls incredibly interesting. It was as if they thought our misfortune was catching. But I held my head high and we walked out, Mark smiling broadly, into the sun and into the last days.

We did everything he wanted to do. We watched some fireworks, we walked all night in the park. We went dancing, and we went to expensive restaurants and sushi bars. He even did one last surgery - a reconstructive one on a three year old girl who had had one side of her face crushed. We got room service and stayed in bed all day some days, and we crammed everything we could into others. But the days seemed so short, and the nights were even short.

The end, when it came, was painless and quick. We were laid together in bed, Mark's arms around me, my head on his chest. He bent his head and kissed me slowly, pouring all the last emotions into it.  
"Addy." he whispered.  
"Shhhh." I had said, not wanting to accept it, "We'll talk in the morning"  
"Addy - I never broke the pact. I saw you and Karev and I didn't want to make it your fault"  
That made me cry, when I promised myself I wouldn't. "I'm sorry, Mark. I thought I knew what I wanted but I didn't"  
He kissed me again, and whispered, "Don't cry, Addy"  
I kissed him back, again and again, not knowing which would be my last.  
"I love you, Addison Montgomery. I have loved you pretty much since the day Derek introduced us. And I know I've screwed up a bunch of times, but I really really love you"  
"And I love you too." I said, and he tightened his arms around me.  
"Go to sleep now." he murmured, and we kissed one painful, final time.

I didn't sleep. I lay awake, but breathing heavily so he thought I was sleeping and peaceful. I felt his arms tighten around me once more, and then I felt them slacken and fall off. His eyes, thankfully, were closed. I felt the hollow loss under my ear as his heart stuttered and stopped. And then I had no more tears to cry. I wrapped my arms around him and laid there, cold and still, for hours.

When I was finally able to move myself and call Derek, it was the early hours of the morning. "Derek, it's Addison." I think he knew, the moment he got my phone call at that hour, what had happened.  
"Addy"  
"He's gone." were the only words I could manage.  
"I'll be right over." he said, and then the line went dead.

He didn't come alone, Meredith came too, and at that moment I felt such a rush of jealousy for the two of them, comforting each other, not alone. And ambulance came and took the body after Derek had pronounced him dead. Meredith held onto me, her arms tight around my shoulders, and I cried into the neck of the woman who had stolen my husband. Everything that had gone before might as well have been erased. None of our history mattered. None of it. Real tragedy bound us close.

Derek kept his eyes averted, but I could tell he had been crying. And when they took the body to the morgue at the hospital, Richard's eyes were red. And all of a sudden Miranda and Callie were there too, and they were hugging me and letting me cry and shout and scream at everyone and no one thought any worse. of me.

The funeral was two days later. I sat in the front row in between Derek and Richard and listened to some priest saying things about 'Dr Sloan', about his compassion and his strength of character, but all I could think of was the look in his eyes he had had when he had lied to me about breaking the pact. And the hunger in them the night we committed adultery. And the resignation in them when he knew he was going to die.

It's a lonely time, after you've lost the one person you love the most, and not for the obvious reasons. People who had been your best friends before disappear off the face of the earth, and you find out who your true friends are. The people who stick by you, through the tears and the screaming fits and the shouting and the swearing, and the hollow threats of suicide. The ones who do as you tell them, who hold you when you need to be held, who leave you when you need to be left. But everyone needs a guardian angel.

Izzie Stevens was mine, my saving grace. A week after the funeral I was sat alone in the apartment that Derek was renting for me, and she knocked on the door. I didn't want to see anybody, but I called her in. She walked through into the lounge where I was sat, Mark's things surrounding me on the floor, and pictures, photos of me and Mark, and Derek and Mark, and all three of us from as far back as college.  
"Oh, Addison." she said, and sat down beside me, setting down a basket of baking from which she took a muffin and handed it to me.

That was the first time I ate properly. She ate a muffin too, and we sat there in silence. Then she looked me right in the eye, the first honest and straight look I had had since I had come back to Seattle from anyone except for Mark, and said: 'I don't have any pictures of Denny'  
Suddenly I wished I'd done something for her when she had suffered. Suddenly I understood why she hadn't come back to work for so long. Suddenly I realised why sometimes when she thought no one was looking she would stare into space and tears would fill her eyes.

I don't know how it happened, but all of a sudden we were in each other's arms, crying and crying and crying, both of us. After about ten minutes of full out sobbing, Izzie sat back and dried her eyes.  
"I would tell you it gets better, but it doesn't. It just gets more distant, until one day you can spend a minute without thinking about it. And then an hour. And then a night where his face isn't in your dreams"  
I nodded, but I couldn't speak. The raw reality of it was hitting me. I would never see Mark again.  
"And then one day you'll dare to feel for someone else. And it's like your first crush, it's overwhelming, vibrant and confusing. You don't know what to do with yourself. You feel happy, sad and guilty all at once"  
She put her arms around me. "You never forget, Addison. But you learn to accept."

It was six months after he died that Meredith found the note. We were clearing out the final boxes of his stuff, and she came across a white envelope, with 'Addy' on the front in Mark's familiar scrawly doctor's writing. She gave it to me wordlessly and I left the room, and sat on the bathroom floor. Gingerly, I opened the envelope.

_Addy,  
If you're reading this then I am probably dead. I hid it right at the bottom of my stuff so you couldn't find it until you'd done the very last of the cleaning out. I don't know how long it's taken you to clean out, so I don't know when this is. It could be days, it could be years. I want you to try not to be too sad. I was just someone passing through your life, you have so much more to go. You have so much more to do. I was just man whore Mark, Derek's best friend, the illicit affair and the man who loves you. But there will others, probably scores of better, hotter, more morally centred men that are in love with you._

_I haven't been in pain, Addy. The only thing that hurts is when you cry. And I'm not even that sad. There's nothing I can do about it, anyway. It's just kind of weird that in about a week it will all be over._

_Find someone else, someone who deserves you. Someone who will never cheat, and who will never lie. Get married and have children, and forget all about me. Make sure Derek knows that I am so sorry for what I did to your marriage, but that I am not sorry for falling in love with you. And that he is my family. Tell Alex Karev that I am sorry for being such a jerk, and that he'll make a really good plastic surgeon one day. Tell Richard Webber I am eternally grateful for the job he gave me, and tell Meredith Grey that this is the other dirty mistress, signing off._

_I love you, Addison Forbes Montgomery, and I will always love you._

_Mark_

I didn't cry, I didn't shout or scream or swear or sob. I just folded the envelope and put it into my pocket.

When I returned to work, finally, the next day, I put the letter in the pocket on the inside of my scrubs, only one thin layer of material and flesh away from my heart.

**I know it's sad. But this seemed to flow so well, and I was in a really bad mood.**

**Hope you like. **


End file.
